The Capital Wasteland Wins Worst Traffic Congestion In America

As many of you know, I'm currently in the process of having my soul sucked out by an hour and a half a day on DC metro parkways. I'm as grateful for my awesome job as anyone else with one but really?!

This is from USA Today so it must be true:

The nation's capital is the most congested metropolitan area in the USA, a new report says. Instead of cursing the rush-hour gridlock, residents of Washington and its suburbs might conclude that their commute is so bad mainly because their city is better off economically than most.

What a bunch of morons out there. You guys think subjecting ourselves to that out there day in and day out makes us somehow better off than everyone else? Yes there are jobs here. But we also are fast on our way to becoming LA freeways at this rate.

This seems a bizarre way to celebrate our well-off-ness. Yay, I burn $7 a day scuttling back and forth from DC to the Maryland suburbs and I've become a hollowed-out recluse as a result. I hide in my condo on the weekends, crippled by Beltway PTSD and barely able to take my car down to the car wash. YAAAAAYYY!!

The Post hits it better:

Washington suffers from the worst traffic congestion in the nation, with drivers spending more than three days out of every 365 caught in traffic.

Helped along by a relatively robust economy, the Washington region forged well ahead of perennial rivals Chicago and Los Angeles, which ranked second and third in an extensive study conducted annually by a research group at Texas A&M University.

“This is one of those odd times when bad news is good news,” said Virginia Transportation Secretary Sean T. Connaughton. “The reason we have more congestion is that the Washington region has a very strong economy. I go to other parts of the state and they say they have no transportation problems.”

THREE DAYS. I look at my GPS stats and can't believe I spent 2 hours not moving out of 10 and a quarter hours of driving. But I can because I'm angry, my car is tired and I'm at the pump every few days. Bright side: there aren't any tolls along the way. Yet.

It's only going to get worse (and has) as we try to accomodate BRAC:

Maryland's depleted Transportation Trust Fund, the pot of money used to pay for local road projects, has languished in recent years as lawmakers directed the funds to other programs, and it remains to be seen whether supporters of a gas tax increase can muster enough momentum next year to rebuild the fund. An attempt to increase the state's 23.5 cents-per-gallon tax by 10 cents died during the 2011 General Assembly session.

“One (hurdle) is the challenge of infrastructure, keeping pace with the traffic demands generated by the new jobs,” said J. Michael Hayes, director of military and federal affairs for the state's Department of Business and Economic Development. “And that in the best of times is a challenge.”

Right.

I'm dying out there, people. Someone save me.